Gift of life

Published: Sunday, April 27, 2014 5:30 a.m. CDT

To the Editor:

My wife died in June 2011. She shouldn’t have; she didn’t have to. She had the best doctors in McHenry. She had the best doctors and facility in Chicago, Northwest Memorial Hospital’s liver transplant department.

She had a 97 percent chance of full recovery. However, when the time came to save her life, there was no donor organ available and she died.

Just as 18 patients die every day; 120,000 more in the U.S. wait and pray for the lifesaving donor organ.

And I am bitter and angry because this death rate does not have to be. All of us can solve this problem ourselves, easily. Simply sign on as an organ donor. What can be easier? Yet the need goes up, the donor pool is stalling? Why?

Why can’t you take a few seconds to sign up? I would hope and pray that if any of you or your families ever needed a transplant, it would be there for them.

A single donor possibly can save eight lives and restore eyesight to another. Think about this.

What greater memory could you have of a loved one, and what greater legacy than to know that in their passing, they gave the gift of life to another?